Using Food To Lower Your Blood Pressure

Although high blood pressure is often inherited, you can often control it by changing your diet and eating more "blood pressure friendly" foods. Knowing what these foods are is the trick. We all eat too much salt, and cutting back on salt would help everyone, young and old.

This is a very important step, and can be a little more difficult than you think. You may need to substitute other spices for the salt that you love. Mrs. Dash has a group of spices that make really good and flavorful substitutes and after you have lived awhile with less salt, you will get more and more accustomed to it.

Try adding these fruits and melons to your diet - they will work to keep your pressure low: Cantaloupe (especially good), apples, bananas, nectarines (especially good), oranges, honeydew melon (especially good), apricots, fruit juice, watermelon, raisins (especially good), avocado (especially good).

Take a bite out of these veggies to fight high blood pressure: Corn on the cob, potatoes (especially good), brussels sprouts, broccoli, eggplant, squash.

Chomp on these foods to lower that pressure: Rice, unsaturated oils and pasta.

Remember.....Cut out that salt - you already get plenty from processed foods. More and more you can find foods that advertise lower salt content - these are always the better choice! Most of the time the added salt is simply for flavor and is not needed.

A good place to start cutting back is in the canned veggie aisle. You will see a large variety of vegetables that are marked "low salt" - take advantage of these and you probably won't even notice the difference.

So, take a bite out of these tasty foods and your body will thank you.